


i can be your china doll (if you'd like to see me fall)

by singsongsung



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 21:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4893211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hello, Humphrey,” she says, and maybe in a movie now they’d smile and get coffee and a montage would commence, but Blair hasn’t thought of her life in cinematic terms in a long time now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can be your china doll (if you'd like to see me fall)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blairbending](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blairbending/gifts).



> we've all agreed to ignore that Dan-is-Gossip-Girl nonsense, right? right.

_"we can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?"_  
\- Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

 

The Hamptons, come September, are suddenly so quiet.

All the noise seems to have disappeared: the classical strains of the string quartets at garden parties, the pop music blasting out of the homes of parents travelling the continent while their children run wild, the shrieks of little girls and the yells of little boys. Even the ocean seems softer, waves brushing against the sand.

Blair’s home, too, is quiet. She’s sent away everyone but her cook and the maid only comes on Tuesdays. Henry is back in the city for school; Alison, his nanny, is caring for him. Chuck is is Prague. Perhaps a better mother would have swallowed her pride and returned to Manhattan, to the pitying looks and the quiet talk of parties she hasn’t been invited to. But Blair has never pretended to be a better mother. 

 

 

Serena calls in the evenings, her voice cloudy with tears. She’s in Rome, she’s been shooting a film, but it’s in post-production now and she’s still not coming home. She doesn’t know what to do, or what to say; she cannot believe her marriage is falling apart.

Blair doesn’t know what to say either. Her marriage finally reached the bottom of that long, long fall, landing on the jagged rocks. Her left hand is so light now, without the weight of her rings. It feels sometimes like it’s floating upward of its own accord. Blair feels sometimes like she’s floating upward, tied to nothing. 

“It’ll be okay, S,” she says softly, gently. Serena cries on the other side of the Atlantic and Blair thinks of all those times she promised they wouldn’t turn into their mothers. “It’ll be okay.”

 

 

She very nearly trips over Dan Humphrey on the beach. He’s sitting there with a miniscule moleskin and a frown and doesn’t look completely surprised to see her - Blair knows without having to ask that he’s still in contact with his estranged wife. 

“Hello, Waldorf,” he says. Blair wraps her shawl more tightly around herself; there is a certain comfort in her old last name, her old identity. 

“Hello, Humphrey,” she says, and maybe in a movie now they’d smile and get coffee and a montage would commence, but Blair hasn’t thought of her life in cinematic terms in a long time now. “What are you doing here?” she asks him. 

“Hiding,” he says, and there’s a hint of that movie-scene smile. “Just like you.” 

Blair glances at the quiet water. “Jenny can handle the company,” she says, like all she’s doing here is taking a vacation from work. 

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah.” He remains seated and she stays standing. “Serena told me you were here. You haven’t come to see Addy.” 

“Serena didn’t tell me _you_ were here.” 

Dan drops his gaze to the sand. “Imagine that.” 

 

 

Cece Rhodes’ old home is still beautiful, the estate sprawling and perfectly manicured, everything inside dusted and polished and perfectly arranged. Blair imagines Serena will get it in the divorce. 

Upon spotting her Addy grins, freckled cheeks splitting in a bright smile, so like the small Serena of Blair’s memories. “Auntie B!” she says happily. “Will you braid my hair?”

“Would you like some tea?” Dan offers as Blair sets to work, weaving Adaline’s soft, dark hair into a French braid. 

Without looking up, she asks, “Do you have anything stronger?”

 

 

Blair stays past Adaline’s bedtime and sits on the deck in one of the old wooden chairs, sipping her second martini. Dan sits on the deck itself, shoulders hunched in a way that prompts the faintest ache in Blair’s chest.

“What have you told her?” she asks. 

“Nothing,” Dan says, shaking his head. “Nothing. She just thinks mommy’s making a movie.” He looks at her, really looks at her for the first time all day, here in the darkness. “Do you think we could go on like that forever? Never saying a word?” 

Blair knows it’s hopeful, miserable humour, but it doesn’t seem so absurd. “I think we’ve already tried.” 

“I can’t tell you that I’m sorry. About your divorce.”

She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t want you to.” The air around them is quiet and still. “But I’m sorry for you.” 

Dan sighs, running his hands through his hair. “For the longest time, I was so stupid. I thought that all that mattered was that I loved her.” 

“I know,” she says very softly. 

He exhales sharply. “I can’t believe we brought a kid into this _shit_.” 

“She’ll be alright,” Blair says immediately. 

Dan looks at her almost as if she’s wounded him. “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t say that to me.”

 

 

Blair visits Adaline once more, helps her dress her dolls for a royal ball. Dan is in his office, writing. She says hello to him when she arrives and doesn’t bother with goodbye. 

 

 

Nate comes to the Hamptons toward the end of the month, when the nights are getting decidedly cool. He takes off his suit jacket and his tie and rolls up his sleeves and his press-conference smile disappears, replaced with that old, easy grin of his. Blair is painfully happy to see him. 

They all have dinner together; Dan cooks. It feels odd to sit at the table all together, Adaline babbling about this and that, completely unaware of the weight of all the history surrounding her. 

Nate comes bearing stories about Henry, laughing about his latest art project and boasting about how he’s going to turn the little boy into a soccer star. He tickles Addy and wears the boa she’s put around his neck for the entirety of the meal. Single, never-married Nate is somehow the best parent of them all. 

“Are you ready for our adventure, Miss Adaline?” he asks, and at the question plain on Blair’s face, Dan tells her, “Nate’s taking Addy to Italy.” 

Blair’s eyebrows launch upward. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” he says easily. “I’ve got to go to London for some Spectator meetings anyway; why not make a stop in _Roma_ , right, Addy?”

Blair can feel her mouth making an ugly shape. “You’re taking her to Serena.” 

Nate looks at her, all the mirth gone from his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, flatly, like he’s waiting for her to say more. 

For several seconds, it is quiet. Blair looks at her plate.

 

 

When Adaline is gone, Dan comes over, a day’s worth of stubble on his cheeks. He brings danishes from the bakery in town and a bottle of wine. Blair gets glasses from the cupboard and asks him about his book. 

“It’s awful,” he says, sinking into the plush cushions of the sofa. 

“Don’t play at modesty.”

“I’m not.” He rubs at one of his rough cheeks. “I haven’t written anything good in years.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true.”

“Because you would know, right?”

Blair looks into his face, surprised. “Did you come over to have an argument? You aren’t getting enough of that from your wife?”

“Ex-wife,” he corrects. “Soon to be, anyway.” 

She bites her lip and asks, softly, “Is that official now?”

Dan lifts his glass in the air, toasting nothing. “Her lawyer will be in touch with mine.” 

“Dan,” she murmurs. 

“Oh, god, don’t do that,” he says. “I know my life’s an utter disaster when Blair Waldorf starts using my given name.”

A ghost of a smile flits across Blair’s lips. “My life was a disaster first.” 

He drains his glass. “You’ve always got to win.” 

 

 

The wine disappears, replaced by a bottle of whiskey, which Blair hates but drinks anyway. There are long, lingering silences between them, the silences years of civil small talk and smiling at one another’s children have reduced them to. There is no middle ground between them, there hasn’t been in a long time - there are pleasantries, and there are devastations. 

“Is he sleeping with her?” Blair asks. 

Dan’s eyes are liquor sleepy, deep and dreamy like those under Blair’s sheets eons ago. “Who?”

“Nate,” she says shortly. “Serena.” 

“Why do you care?” Dan asks. “Why is it always a fucking competition between you two?”

“I’m not competing for Nate,” Blair says sharply. “I’m just - ”

“You just want to make sure Serena’s divorce isn’t happier than your divorce.”

Stung, she asks, “Do you really think I’m that petty?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

Blair sits up, her spine a straight line. “I’m merely _asking_ , since most people don’t take their friends’ children to Europe as a _favour_ \- ”

“I doubt it,” Dan cuts in, sounding exhausted. “I doubt they’re sleeping together. Has Nate still got that school boy crush? Probably. Will Serena get drunk enough to fuck him at some point? Probably. So, _will_ they sleep together? _Probably_. But I don’t care, and neither should you.” 

“She’s your _wife_!” Blair says, aghast. 

“And I don’t have to damn leg to stand on if I want to get in that fight with her.” 

“What - ”

That’s all Blair gets to say, because Dan is kissing her, a little sloppy with drunkenness, a little rough with desperation, and she is kissing him back in the same way, not picturesque or romantic but awful and raw. She lets him take off her clothes and the stubble on his cheeks turns her skin faintly pink and she grabs at him mercilessly - hands yanking at his hair, fingernails in his skin, buttons torn off his shirt. At some point, in the midst of it, she can feel the cool metal of his wedding ring against her ribs. 

Blair doesn’t let herself moan. The heady rush of alcohol and desire fills her head so much that she does not even hear Dan’s breathing. Their sex is as silent as everything else. 

 

 

“You’re just lonely,” Blair scoffs when Dan shows up on her doorstep, like she hasn’t spent all day longing for the sound of his knock. 

“That’s what they tell me,” he says. “Or they used to, anyway.”

But he is not the boy he used to be, and she is not the girl she once was. She can’t be haughty with him anymore, demanding and demeaning. She can only look at him, holding her breath, waiting for him to make the first move. 

It never gets to her bedroom - it’s always somewhere else, the sofa in the living room, the bar, the powder room nearest the back door, the island in the kitchen. She won’t bring herself to take him anywhere real. 

This is where they stand. There isn’t any going back, and there will be no going forward. Dan has a daughter, Blair has a son. She will always love Serena so very much, and he will always hate Chuck with the same intensity. They are older and they’ve made mistakes.

Blair watches Dan get dressed and thinks of all the things she might have had. 

 

 

They see a movie once. It is Dan’s idea and Blair pretends not to want to go and refuses to sit next to him - she’s had enough scandal in the past few months. 

The theatre is relatively empty; they sit on opposite ends of one row. Afterward, Blair can hardly remember a single detail about the film, but it makes her cry. 

Everyone files out before them in couples and small groups. She gets up and walks down the row, taking the seat next to Dan’s. 

He reaches for her hand and holds it gently. There is hardly anything good about the moment - the overhead lights are blaring, her eyes are red and sore, and a sullen teenager has come in to start cleaning up spilled popcorn. 

He says, “Can I kiss you?” It’s such an innocent question that it seems misplaced. 

“No,” she says, and then, ever contrary, presses her mouth to his. 

 

 

“I’m so sorry, Serena,” Blair murmurs into her phone, wrapped up in the blankets of her bed, _Charade_ playing on mute on the television. 

“Yeah,” Serena murmurs, sighing. “It’s the last thing I wanted.” 

“I know,” Blair whispers. 

Silence lingers between them. She’s growing so accustomed to the quiet that she just closes her eyes and waits for it to be broken. 

Serena begins to cry and Blair’s eyes snap open. “Oh, S,” she starts, ready to offer a thousand sympathies.

But Serena interrupts. “Addy said you had dinner with them,” she says, and then, as if this is all part of the same thought, “B, I miss you.” Her sobs are heavy and loud; Blair has yet to hear her cry quite this hard over her failed marriage. 

“Serena,” she whispers, tears springing to her own eyes. “I miss you, too.”

They cry together on the phone for a long time. Hanging up is so painful; it hurts like a part of Blair has been yanked right out of her body. 

 

 

“I’ve been thinking,” Blair says, “that I might move to Paris.”

Dan throws back his cup of espresso like it’s a shot. It’s a Monday evening and they are the only ones in the small cafe with wobbly-legged chairs. 

She continues, “My entire family is there now. And Henry could finally learn the language - I’ve had to fire his last two French tutors.” 

He looks into his miniscule, empty cup like there are answers there. “Blair,” he finally says, “you know I want you to be happy, right?”

It would have hurt less if he’d told her he loved her.

 

 

In the garden of Cece’s old house, they play croquet. Dan isn’t very good and he hams it up when he sees that his failures make her smile; she laughs for the first time in many weeks. The sun is warm and the waves are making a little noise for once, rumbling in the background. Dan is playing something old and crooning on the record player he’s dragged outside. 

“Will you miss coming here?” Blair asks, brushing her hair out of her face as she watches him line up his next shot. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Very much.” 

He looks up at her and she meets his eyes. The song ends and there is nothing but static. 

 

 

Blair packs for Manhattan. In Manhattan she will pack for Paris. 

Into one of her boxes, Dan places a thick piles of papers, bound on one edge. “My book,” he explains. “It’s almost done.” 

“Almost?” she echoes.

“Almost.” 

She sits down on the edge of her bed. “Promise me you’ll finish it,” she says lightly, offering him a smile that is everything but real.

Dan looks at her with the eyes of a hallway so many years ago, the very first time they looked at each other. Again, she can see the things that are so hard to say.

He has no more promises left to give her.

 

 

The Hamptons, come October, are eerily silent. The air is brisk; it cuts to the bone.

In the car Blair cries like her heart would break without making a single noise.


End file.
